"One of the beautiful things about Magritte's work is that it's really made for the viewer to participate in.''—Jeff Koons. See the photos here.

Surrealism has always been very important to me—it was the first art movement I really responded to. I imagine I probably first came into contact with René Magritte around age 13. I think Surrealism helps people go inward—to really dive into the muck and understand themselves—and then return outward with a new sense of self-acceptance. I find Magritte's work to be very liberating in its execution: It's very direct, and it communicates very clearly. There's also an accessibility to it. Magritte is very much about the things that we all experience and the sensations of daily life that we all encounter. Even though these images can come off as being mysterious or strange, they're actually archetypal. Just the other evening during twilight, I was thinking, Gosh, this is just like a Magritte moment. Look at the paintings that depict both day and night. On the street it's dark and the lamppost is on, but above it you have a daylight sky with these perfect wispy white clouds. We've all experienced twilight, that moment when it's both light and dark at the same time. I was thinking, Just exaggerate this slightly, with more shadow here, and this would be that moment exactly in the painting. There's a reality in the seemingly unrealistic moments he creates, even though he makes these strange juxtapositions. He predated Photoshop, when you think about it.

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Magritte is still so influential today because of the combination of different tools he used: scale, color, and images that clearly bring about contradiction and juxtaposition. Recurring throughout his work are all these accessible things that we come across in everyday life—a pipe, a tuba, wood, a bird, fire, bread. Everybody can relate to the apple: You can think of the apple within, say, Christianity and the Garden of Eden.

I own several Magrittes, dating from 1927, which was a fantastic year for him. I've always loved his painting Discovery, of the woman whose skin looks like the grain in wood. I also have two Magritte paintings in my bedroom at home. Every day when I wake up I see La Préméditation and Les Idées Claires.

La Préméditation is a very brightly colored piece from 1943. It's strange in that it's a bush with many types of flowering heads—like a tulip head, a pansy head, a daffodil head, a carnation head, and a rose head—instead of being just one plant. Les Idées Claires is from 1955. In it you see a rock floating over the ocean underneath a cloud. There's an oddness to it and also a sense of time. I can associate that with my Equilibrium Tank sculptures of basketballs suspended in vitrines of water.

I also have a drawing of a pipe and one of his faux-wood paintings called La Fin du Temps. It looks like a mirror but is made of cutout folded paper instead of glass. I keep it at my grandparents' farm in Pennsylvania. It's always interesting to see what other artists collect, and I know that Robert Rauschenberg had some fantastic Magrittes. So does Jasper Johns.

Art brings you in contact with feeling. When you see a Magritte, you feel something; you have an experience that can be very, very strong. He's very poetic. One of the beautiful things about his work is that it's really made for the viewer to participate in. There's a generosity there—it's about you and your response to the work. So when you confront a Magritte, it's not "Oh, Magritte felt this." It's really about what you feel and about creating a shared opportunity for you to experience this sensation. It's not that he wanted to lock himself up in a room to create works for his own experience of these sensations. It's about the viewer's perception. It's about what it means to be human, not what it means to be René Magritte. —As told to Lindsay Talbot.

"Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938," at New York's Museum of Modern Art, September 28 through January 12, 2014

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